{all we need to know about joy}

today was Jen Weiss' surprise good-bye party; reason 607 to wish I were in NYC... though yes, here, a lovely weekend with Ms. Gottlieb and I don't hate LA so much.

but I wish I could have been there for it -- and I wrote a poem for her/the reading but didn't get it to Roger in time.

it's not that I want to get back into activist work because it'll be good fodder for poetry or because I'm afraid that teaching poetry full-time will make writing it tedious or more difficult -- but because I miss the tangible knowing or at least belief that what you do every day makes a difference in the lives of at least a handful of people. and when those people are amazing young writers who might otherwise never understand how phenomenal their voices are, well, a lot of career options pale in comparison.

but it's a Job. and an exhausting one at that. of course, after this experience, I don't know what ISN'T exhausting. short of winning the lottery or discovering a lost trust fund, I haven't heard any funding options that don't interfere in one way or another with just creating art. and I can't say for sure that having nothing to do BUT create art wouldn't engender an experiential vacuum and leave me with nothing to write.

anyway, here's the poem (huge thanks to Daphne for the by-the-pool edits):

incantation for the hard road

we fuel. we burn through daily and wake
anyway, we hummingbirds dreaming of Sisyphus knowing
there is another side to the mountain, we go on.
listen: a face that toils so close to stone is already stone itself

/ we push. know the heart's invisible work mends
not just itself but the world's heart, that bad engine
struggling, and his and hers and is fuel, that the wind relies
on the hummingbird's speed and what seems like stillness

is Sisyphus' first breath and shoulder to stone again
/ we are not myth. throw our fist-sized hearts into the void
and push, believing. knowing the stone we roll uphill
leaves a clearer path than one made by walking

alone / we do not explode. become the stone
we push, cheek to rock, a kiss, a hummingbird's faith in levitation
our belief in the other side we will never reach
teaching us all we need to know about joy.

***

note: italicized line is from The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus; translated from the French by Justin O'Brien, 1955; Vintage Books edition of 1991.